other specified positions. The classified service comprises all other offices, which are subdivided into three groups: the competitive, the non-competitive, and the exempt. The competitive group includes such officers as clerks, copyists, stenographers, cashiers, and civil engineers. The offices in this group are filled by examinations or promotions and transfers.

The civil service laws require all examinations to be practical in their character and to relate to such matters as will fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of persons examined to discharge the duties of the service which they seek to enter. For the various places requiring technical skill-such as the positions of factory inspector, health officer, civil engineer, chemist, and expert accountant special examinations in the respective branches are given; and in no case is reliance placed solely on book knowledge. The persons who are successful in the examinations are grouped according to the services which they seek to enter and arranged in the order of their respective grades. Whenever a vacancy occurs, the appointing officers must choose usually from the three names highest on the roll of candidates.

The non-competitive class includes those minor employees whom it is impracticable to include in the competitive class, such as bakers, carpenters, stone-cutters, and picture-framers. Appointments to the non-competitive class are made after noncompetitive examinations conducted according to rules.

In the exempt class are the deputies of the principal executive officers, the chief clerks, and skilled and unskilled laborers not included in the other classes.

The civil service laws, as a rule, provide, furthermore, that removal must not be made for political reasons, but only for incompetence or insubordination. In case of removal, the employee affected usually has the right to be heard in his own behalf.

The administration of the civil service law is generally vested in the hands of a commission composed of three members, not more than two of whom may be adherents of the same political party. An exception to this general principle is offered by Maryland where in 1920 the function was entrusted to a department with a single head; it is the duty of the commissioner to prescribe and enforce rules carrying the civil service act into effect, to plan and hold examinations for the various branches of the service, to make investigations, to certify eligibles to appointing

officers as called for, and to hold hearings in case of removals. The Maryland law is also noteworthy because it authorizes the commissioner to make a complete classification of the positions coming under the merit system and to assign the various offices to their appropriate classes. Furthermore he is instructed to make a study of rates paid for similar services in public and private employment and to recommend schedules of compensation for state officers to be put into effect on approval of the governor. The Maryland commissioner is called the director of the state department of employment and registration and has a place in the governor's cabinet.1

1 National Municipal Review, Vol. XII, p. 358.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE STATE LEGISLATURE

The legislature should occupy a high position in the esteem of the citizens of a commonwealth, for in it are made the laws which most vitally affect their lives and property. Unlike the Congress of the United States, the state legislature is not restricted to the exercise of certain powers, but enjoys every right and authority which is not expressly denied to it by the Constitution of the United States or the constitution under which it is erected. It has control over the whole domain of civil law; that is, it lays down the rules governing contracts, real and personal property, inheritance, corporations, mortgages, marriage and divorce, and other civil matters. It defines crime; that is, it prescribes those actions of the citizen which are to be punished by fine or imprisonment or death. It touches the property of the citizen not only by regulating its use, but also by imposing upon it a burden of taxation. Finally, it has control over that vast domain known as the police power; in other words, it makes regulations concerning public health, morals, and welfare, devises rules for the conduct of business and professions, and in other ways restrains the liberty of the citizen to do as he pleases.

The general term applied to the representative branch of the state government is "the state legislature"; but the technical name for that body varies from state to state. In about one half of the commonwealths it is known as "the general assembly"; in a few states as the "legislative assembly"; and in New Hampshire and Massachusetts as "the general court." All the states call the upper house of the legislature the senate; and in most of them the lower house is known as the house of representatives, though in some states, including New York, it bears the name of the assembly, and in a few others that of the house of delegates.

The Structure of the Legislature

The state legislature is always divided into two houses. In the source of their authority and the nature of their powers, they are substantially alike. Both are elected by the same voters and in ordinary legislation they are equal. The differences between them are, except in one or two matters, unimportant. The ancient rule that money bills must originate in the lower house is frequently inscribed in the constitution, but in practice it amounts to almost nothing. The senate is always smaller in number and the term of the senator generally longer than that of his colleague in the lower chamber. Very often the senate, like its greater counterpart at Washington, is made a continuous body by provision for partial, instead of total, renewal at each election. The senators, being elected from larger districts, are, as a rule, more prominent and more influential in party councils and public affairs. Their influence is usually augmented by the constitutional provision that they shall have the right to approve or reject nominees to high state offices presented by the governor and to concur or dissent when removals are proposed. This gives them a power over patronage, with all its by-products, which their brethren below do not enjoy.

Theoretically speaking, there is no reason why a state legislature should have two houses. The House of Lords in England, the upper house in Switzerland, and the Senate of the United States are to be accounted for on the ground that some provision had to be made for the representation of specific interests which could not in the nature of circumstances be separately represented in the lower chamber. The House of Lords, in its historic origin at least, spoke for the landed aristocracy and the clergy; the Swiss Federal Council and the American Senate represent large and important subdivisions which enjoy the flavor if not the substance of sovereignty and cling stoutly to their ancient rights. When, as in the early days of our constitutional history, the state senators represented openly and lawfully the larger propertied interests, there was a practical justification for the two houses; but that reason has long ago disappeared. Before the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution placed all state legislation under the supervision of the federal judiciary and removed

1 See above, p. 459.

all danger of confiscatory measures, there was some ground for claiming that the more checks and balances in the state government, the better for property rights.

ures.

As things stand now the only defense of the double-chamber system in the states rests upon the theory that it helps to prevent hasty and ill-considered legislation by assuring more deliberation and reflection. This hypothesis, much lauded in orations and praised in grammar-school books, has seldom been put to the acid test of fact. Indeed there has been only one detailed and searching inquiry made into the working of the hypothesis in practice,1 namely, D. L. Colvin's Bicameral Principle in the New York Legislature. Mr. Colvin could discover very few evidences of any checks on hasty legislation imposed by the two chamber system. He reported that only nineteen per cent of the bills which passed one house were killed in the second and that only fifteen per cent of all bills were amended after they fell into the hands of the second chamber. The bills killed or amended, however, were not fundamental laws which might "shake the foundations of the commonwealth"; they were relatively insignificant measMoreover a large number of them would never have been passed by the chamber in which they originated if that house had known that it would have to assume full responsibility for them. "Two considerations," he justly remarks, "do not necessarily mean double consideration. There is a tendency to assume that a subject has been considered in the other house when that consideration has been very inadequate; or sometimes one house passes a bill with the expectation that the other house will deal with it more carefully" - an expectation not always realized. That is not even the most significant element to be noted. In practice all important measures passed by a state legislature are determined upon by party leaders in both houses and debate on those measures is only a slight incident in their life history. Of course the conclusions drawn by Mr. Colvin from a study of one legislative session are not of universal application; but the burden of proof rests on those who assert that a second chamber in a state legislature really acts as a check upon hasty and ill-considered legislation, and works as an important safeguard to the rights of person and property.

In determining the size of each house, our state constitution 1 For the historical aspects of the subject see Moran, Rise and Development of the Bicameral System.